Sam Altman says major DRAM manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron Technology, are reluctant to build new fabrication plants. According to the OpenAI chief, overcapacity created during previous expansion cycles brought these companies close to bankruptcy and continues to make them cautious about investing. That restraint persists even though each of the companies could generate roughly $100 billion in annual free cash flow, driven by strong demand for high-bandwidth memory linked to artificial intelligence. Altman argues that current price signals are insufficient to trigger the capacity increase needed, while Anthropic also flagged a potential supply shortage in its IPO filing. Insufficient factory expansion could therefore constrain the deployment of AI systems, making investment announcements from the three major manufacturers decisive.
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